


Dreaming of You

by Abyssiniana



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Art Student AU, F/M, Gen, Keith is an art student, M/M, SHEITH - Freeform, Shiro is the new live model, adashi, breaking Adashi, is there any other way to Sheith if there's no pining, pining fools
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 19:55:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20681024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abyssiniana/pseuds/Abyssiniana
Summary: Keith knew exactly what he wanted out of art school; painting and drawing had been his life since he was old enough to hold a pencil. Expressing through brushstrokes, creating realities on canvas, inflicting dimensions on the viewer, mixing emotions as he mixes colours, writing history as it happened. The faculty of Fine Arts had the academic tools for him to be the painter he wanted to be; he didn’t expect, however, that his college experience would come with a ripped as fuck boyfriend.__the fic that's been collecting spiderwebs on my GDrive for like a year now





	Dreaming of You

> _Seen you from afar_   
_Wondered who you are_   
_Wondered what you're like_   
_Think you're just my type_
> 
> * * *

Stepping into the faculty of Fine Arts always caused Keith Kogane’s breath to catch just a little. He should already be used to the scent of old furniture, or the black linoleum floor, or how heavily the traveller backpack with his supplies hung from his shoulder. Every time he entered though there was a brief sensation of having the floor disappearing beneath his boots each step he took - a little ticklish sensation on his lower belly - but gravity was on his side and kept him on track. Everything he had done, every test he had taken, every unfair middle and high school teacher he avoided punching, was so that one day he would cross these double doors, and there he was. Second-year of college, the first day of the second semester, and he was still a Fine Arts Student, majoring in Painting.

The replicated sculptures of Michelangelo’s Slaves in their amateur plastered quality towering over him from the arches of the entrance hall were intimidating enough to scare any newcomer, but not Keith; for him, their gorgeously contorted torsos welcomed him home.

The Fine Arts building had been a palace built in the beginning of the nineteenth century, complete with luxurious gardens and lakes. Said gardens were left to abandon over time, and allowed to fall into disrepair. That was until the 1950s, when an enterprising member of the board bought the land and converted the old building into the current academy Keith attends, rising several pavilions specially designed taking in account the particular needs for each discipline. For years, it held the title of most prestigious art school in the country, more recently falling behind in the ranking due to the questionable maintenance of the buildings. Grass grew between the stone slabs of the pathway that connected each edifice, trees and numerous sculptures decorating the space, a little piece of serenity among buildings of concrete.

To his left, a program of every event scheduled to happen for the month was posted, ranging from exhibitions to concerts and public lectures, and to the right, a donation box for the Students’ Council, which Keith promptly ignored. Already, there was a queue in front of the door to the student affairs office, and a bunch of heads sporting badly dyed hair climbing the steps to the Aula Magna for their first class of the day. History of Art 101, Keith assumed, spotting the unamused features of the first-year teacher.

He snorted silently before turning left and walking to the cafeteria, making a game out of dodging the lingering first-years. He reminisced of the past year, when he was part of a similar crowd, waiting to be submitted to the deep academic insight in the architecture, painting and sculpture aspects of the Gothic period during History classes.

If he wasn’t already late, he would’ve sat at one of the bright yellow tables, working his way around one of those puffy croissants, fresh out of the oven, but it was a little past nine and thus he simply ordered his coffee to go. He glanced over at the baked goods again, promising to himself that he’d return for that beautiful caloric bomb after class.

“Right away, Keith!” With an amount of energy and joy impossible for the early hours of the morning, the ginger barista with the funky moustache juggled with several orders at once. How he managed, Keith would never decipher. Knowing the price by habit, he dropped the coins on the counter and grabbed one of the two take-away cups that awaited their fate.

Around him, a muscled arm reached for the second cup, followed by a guttural yet polite “thank you, sir” and a wink to the man on the other side of the counter. Keith turned, eyebrow raised, head tilted up - just how _ tall _ was this guy?! Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds, and while the other momentarily stopped in his tracks, Keith couldn’t afford the waste of time; that stranger seemed so out of place in an Art school, with a tight tee that outlined the definition of his abs, a stupid cap with the visor back, _ Adidas _ sweatpants... the type of jock whose head seemed to be filled with nothing but steroids, alcohol, sex and silicone breasts.

Pitiful. _ Go back to your private low-rated college, party boy, and leave this place for people who actually want to make something of themselves instead of spending daddy’s money on useless courses. _

Styrofoam cup in hand, Keith walked away, only sipping his coffee once he was outside. 

Almost as immediately as his tongue touched the scalding hot beverage he spat it back out, splattering the porch entrance of the Painting Pavilion with it.

“What the _ fuck _, Coran?!” He cursed at the poor barista, staring at the contents of the cup; tea? Ugh. Unsweetened on top of that. Who the heck was enough of a masochist to drink something that tasted like dead people?! Black coffee was not the same as black tea, though he was sure Coran wasn’t bound to make such a mistake; after all, he ordered the same damn thing every morning. Had he picked up the wrong cup?

With no time to go back and demand a refund or a trade, Keith tossed the eighty cent drink to the bucket that served as garbage outside the building and headed to the atelier, promising that he’d get himself a proper coffee during the break, a couple hours from then.

The fifties had been a lovely decade, in a country mostly recovered from World War II and constant clashes between communism and capitalism, but any building built in that epoch needed maintenance. _ Urgent _ maintenance. The walls of the Painting Pavillion were cracked, the windows rusted and the asbestos rooftops were not only harmful to the general health, but they were also full of holes, causing frequent floods and ruining the students’ artwork. Unfortunately, each time a renovation project was proposed it was shot down over the most varied excuses; from budget issues to not being able to decide between restoring or updating the interior, or any number of strange political reasons the board had. In the meantime though, they were stuck with a slowly disintegrating building where you had to be very careful with your work if you chose to keep it there. Without a proper ceiling in the ateliers, paintings were ruined over a rainy night.

Were he not used to the points of depression on each marble stair, spent over the course of over half a century of being stepped on, Keith would’ve lost balance as he walked up to the third floor. The scent of turpentine easily overlapped the noxious fumes coming from the notoriously poorly ventilated bathroom nearby, which made Keith sneeze but he was quick to ignore it to head to his class.

The once white walls of the atelier were a memorial for every rebel aspiring painter who couldn’t keep the brush where it was meant to be, against the canvas, and had felt the need to leave their mark - a signature, quotes, song lyrics, a nasty poem followed by a dick doodle. They sure pushed the boundaries of creativity with nothing short of vulgarity.

Punctual as ever, Professor Kolivan stood in the corner, all respect and intimidation with his military posture, hands behind his back and perfectly squared shoulders, preparing to speak to the class while disregarding any student who wasn’t there yet. The 40% who were effectively present were instructed to arrange their easels in a circle around a vacant plinth. Keith followed without questioning. 

“As referred on the updated program, the class will be split in half; those of you who already arrived will be working with a live model, and the others will be redirected to the park across the street for landscape sketching and study.” The tall man proceeded, pacing about the workroom to make sure he was heard, voice echoing all the way up the high ceiling.

That put Keith right where he’d prefer being - landscape drawing was a bore - and so he picked up his drawing supplies, setting a couple of sheets on the clipboard, looking for any droplet of motivation left inside him. Without his breakfast, it was proving to be rather tough. Professor Kolivan requested the minimum of ten sketches, timed from two to ten minutes. He needed to step up his sketching game if he wanted to get a proper painting of the model.

He and his colleagues settled on the uncomfortable round stools ass hurting already just from memories of many long classes on these very stools; now to wait for the model. Keith allowed himself to speculate, would it be Catherine, a female model he had some practice in portraying from last year’s Drawing classes? He hoped so, the woman’s body received direct lighting in a beautiful way, exalted by her soft curves.

While some immature fucks would treat her inappropriately making sniggering comments all class, like a she was there and naked for their amusement rather than a tool for learning. Keith prefered to prioritize how she would look both in graphite and on canvas. Past experience told him she would be perfect for this assignment.

Personal tendencies aside, of course, Keith thought she was a beautiful woman. It just wasn’t the point.

“Welcome.” He heard Kolivan salute a newcomer and indicate them to the storage room to get changed and keep their belongings, Keith’s indigo eyes delayed too much to lay a premature glance to the human mannequin before they disappeared behind the door.

Only seconds later, a man came out, black robe hanging from his broad shoulders, not quite wrapped around his waist, veiny bare feet on dated oil paint stains on the tiled floor as he paced to sit upon the plinth. Keith recognized him as the stereotypical frat boy from the cafeteria, dyed forelock making him look like the lead singer of a cheesy boys band.

_ Yep. Definitely not Catherine. But that didn’t have to be a bad thing. _

“Quiet.” No one was talking, but Kolivan demanded silence anyway. “Shiro here will be posing for us today. I’ll be timing your initial sketches, and he’ll change position every time the alarm sounds. Understood?”

After the affirmative humming, the teacher and the model exchanged a few more words, from which Keith could only make out a request for dynamism, to challenge shape and gravity in whatever way was possible for him. He nodded, jaw clenching after a thick gulp, which could be understood as introductory nervousness, the robe sliding off his body and tossed aside with a certain hesitation. Keith then understood why; a carbon-fibre prosthetic replaced the whole right limb just below the shoulder, some rough pinkish scars marking the connection between flesh and metal. The design seemed to push the boundaries of biomedical engineering, each finger with individual motion. A work of art, accompanied with the living magnum opus of Michelangelo on perfectly chiselled abs and salient hip bones.

The “ooh’s” and “aah’s” of speculation in the atelier were but a collection of murmurs among his classmates, the giggles associated with Terminator jokes earning them a reprimanding sound of Kolivan clearing his throat in utter disapproval, tone suggesting that he could twist their arm into the same situation with ease, if they pushed it too far.

Legally, he couldn’t harm the students, but the fact that he had the ability to do so was enough to silence the idiots.

“Whenever you’re ready, Shiro.”

The first pose was a tentative, classic contrapposto, but the tip of Keith’s pencil didn’t touch the sheet when the teacher announced the beginning of the exercise. The scratching of graphite on paper around him became white noise comparing to the steady breathing of the model right before him, as Keith’s eyes studied what his drawing tools should, sketching around the angle of Shiro’s torso, delaying on the bumps and depressions of his shape, contouring the serene expression and engraving it into memory. So natural, so relaxed, so effortless. Where flesh meets prosthetic, stories were told and Keith could only wonder and travel to realms of supposition.

Badass mechanical arm aside, Shiro was nothing short of stunning. From the bump of his Adam’s Apple to the angle of his lips to the flaccid yet so inviting cock, pushed slightly upwards due to the size of his balls. 

_ Oh, man. _

Keith deemed impossible to stamp that body upon the surface of a paper, to imitate an otherworldly reality on the flatness of a two-dimensional support. What was Kolivan thinking, hiring such a utopic man to pose for second years?! Was this a test? He couldn’t be unaware of the position he put his students in, facing the archetype of human physique with bleached hair and-

The first whistle of the alarm startled Keith, who jumped on his seat and glanced over his shoulder to find an armoire of a man in his terrifying fifties, clad in leather, which only made him look bigger. 

“You draw with your hands, Kogane, not your eyes. Have you forgotten something as basic as that?”

“N-No, sir.”

_ Get your shit together. _

It was a regular, completely normal procedure. A naked man, on total display, getting paid a couple fat dollars to be drawn in several poses by students ranging in age from eighteen to thirty-seven-years-old. That was all. It was a professional exchange, professionally arranged and nothing was expected of Keith but professional decency. So why did his face feel so warm?

When his eyes looked back up to focus on his work rather than the physical attributes of the model, Keith’s breath was knocked out of him yet again at the sight. He was smirking.

Shiro was motherfucking _ smirking _ at him.

There was no way Keith would survive the events of Painting class. The whistle alarm sounded again.

“Next pose!” Kolivan announced, and Keith’s surroundings sped up like a video.

He struggled to keep up, taking the time to catch the breath he didn’t realize had slipped from him and take in Shiro’s new stance. The human mannequin graciously twisted his torso, arm curling behind his head, weight focused on one leg. Keith took advantage of the fact that Shiro put back on his serious face and did the same, pencil finally tracing the tense posture before him.

Attentively, Keith noticed how the model held his flesh arm behind his back, clasping it in place with his prosthetic. What a gorgeous bicep, Keith mused, discreet gaze tracing the line of his deltoid up to the trapezius and the thick muscles of Shiro’s neck. The yellow spotlight warmed already tanned skin and Keith found himself wondering what the slightly glistening skin would taste like on his tongue, or how it would feel to sign it with his lips; a little red mark just over the other male’s carotid, a claim, one he wasn’t entitled to, but holy damn, did he want to do it. Those abs, those thick thighs… Shiro was the picture ideal of a Greek god, pectorals inflating and intercostal muscles shifting with each calculated breath he took. When had general muscle anatomy become so erotic?

Oh right, since Keith laid eyes on Shiro.

_ Fuck. _

He had a goddamned boner, hid only by the fabric of his jeans and the hands that rested on his lap. He tried valiantly to will it away, but he still had quite a long time of class, consisting essentially of staring at this Adonis of a man for him to get very far. He’d eventually need to get his little problem taken care of but without cold water or a slap to the face, it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. For the time being, he pressed his hand further down and tried to focus on both the drawing and keeping a straight face. 

Incredible how it only took a single look and less of a second for Keith to become what he abhorred the most in his fellow painters; to sexually objectify the model went against his beliefs, but his groin had no filter for such situations.

_ It’s not a hot guy _ , Keith repeated in his head like a mantra, _ Just a dummy. A human, made purely of every single thing that forms the epitome of your physical desire, but a dummy nevertheless. Snap out of it. _

That thought got him through the first half of the class with a permanent hue of red across his face and a series of sketches he could only vaguely be proud of. The quality wasn’t in question, the proportions were on point and, save a few little remarks left by Kolivan when he walked by his seat, perfect; they captured Shiro’s physical multitude, his volumes and general shape (except for a convenient white spot on the crotch area of every single drawing, because good Lord, he couldn’t focus on that bulky cock long enough to draw it without beginning to salivate), yet none of them seemed good enough to transfer to a canvas, which was the point of these initial drawings.

An interval of twenty-five minutes timed with military precision was announced, a great wave of students heading towards the exit for a smoke or a snack. Keith stayed behind unwilling to join the mad rush to escape the classroom. It was enough to see Shiro reaching for a styrofoam cup he kept next to him on the makeshift stage, similar to the one which had betrayed him with the wrong contents that morning. Shiro’s whole face scrunched up into a grimace, the tip of his tongue sticking out like he had just tasted ashes. Somehow, he found the grit to gulp on the cold beverage, much to Keith’s respect.

He didn’t seem like the black coffee type of guy; black tea did suit him better. A bold mental affirmation for a total stranger, but it didn’t take much math to realize what had happened that morning. It hadn’t been poor Coran’s fault that they had both gotten the wrong order; Keith couldn’t even blame Shiro, since he had been the one to reach blindly for one of the cups instead of being a citizen, or at the very least, polite human being. Next time, he promised, he’d try to be less of a judgemental asshole.

How was he supposed to know anyway?

What _ did _ he know? Heck, this whole situation was tiring him way too much. It wasn’t like him to be dwelling on things beyond his control.

“Mind if I take a look?”

The deep voice startled Keith, indigo eyes darting to meet grey ones. 

_ Stunning _ grey ones.

The young painter hadn’t realized that the model had gotten up and walked towards him, arms crossed over his chest as to hold the robe in place. His respectful stance suggesting that he wouldn’t peek over the clipboard unless given the permission. The instinct was to cover all the sketches out of childish embarrassment - _ they’re not good at all, not good enough, not for him _ -, but the intensity of Shiro’s stare pinned him to the seat in complete, utter mortification.

“... Sure.” Keith might have regurgitated the words over saliva gone rotten after sitting still for so long around his tongue. He nibbled at his lower lip, the bland taste of flesh doing nothing to ease the nausea.

Shiro walked behind him, expectantly looking over the sheet, a soft “Woah” slipping from his lips. In his latest fifteen minutes long drawing Shiro was sitting on the platform, one leg underneath him and the other bent so that his thigh was pressing against his torso. The face, Kolivan often reminded his students, should be the least of their concerns in this initial phase of sketching; but aside the general shape and muscle definition, that was the area with the most detail on Keith’s work. A pair of graphite crystallized eyes locked somewhere in the distance, the expression serene and the jaw sharp, ready to cut through anything at all. The mechanical arm - in equal parts compelling and a pain to draw - rested over the knee, his centre open and exposed, or it should have been, had Keith had the courage to even allow his eyes to go near it.

“You missed a spot.” Shiro joked, looking over at Keith from beneath the white fringe. It was ridiculous how cute the damn floof thing looked on him. At first glance a bold fashion statement that, up close, seemed to come from deeper origins than from an expensive hair salon. He had heard of the Marie Antoinette syndrome in literature, which would match the untold history of the scars across his body and the trauma of losing a limb… Was it truly stress-induced? What horrors had he gone through, that his body demanded such a preeminent physical reminder every time he looked in the mirror? 

“Well. It’s not a big deal, anyway.” He didn’t mean it as a tease, but the growing grin across Shiro’s face made it worth the taunt. “It’s… not the point of the sketches, I mean.” The need to clarify was futile, but still, he felt like he should, under the possibility of accidentally sending Shiro away.

_ Yes, please stay. _

_ Actually, _ ** _don’t_ ** _ . _ In the myriad of befuddled repulse and inexplicable attraction, Keith did his best to just stay put, trying to unmuddle his mind to figure out the acceptable social behaviour to politely ask the model to leave him alone to his awkward boner and the cookie package which awaited his visit to the vending machine by the bathrooms. Defensively, he crossed his arms over his chest, self-soothing himself by nibbling on his lower lip and looking away.

Keith was hoping that Shiro would pick up his discomfort through his not-so-subtle body language.

_ He didn’t. _

Or just pretended not to.

“These are pretty good! You seemed petrified at one point, had me a little worried.” He proceeded, taking the liberty to flip through the few A3 sized sheets. Keith attempted at a nervous smile, which probably resembled a creepy grimace instead; damn right he was petrified. Who wouldn’t be, with the living personification of the apotheosis of Baroque sculpture, straight out of the marbles of the seventeenth century, standing right next to them?

Shiro straightened his back as he stared down at his vibrating smartphone and Keith felt deprived of the heat that radiated from his body like some crazy junkie with an obsessive need for the man’s presence.

The way his heart pumped in a manner that had to be unhealthy only confirmed Keith’s obituary: death by overexposure to the painting class nude model.

“Hello?” Shiro almost whispered to the device he took to his ear, head low and apprehensive like a puppy being scolded. Eavesdropping was rude, but Keith could hardly help it when Shiro was right next to him, a male voice yelling on the other side of the connection. It was impossible to make out the exact words, but the anger they were coated in made him frown. “Oh. Yes. I’m… working. Kind of. _ Sorry, excuse me. _” 

That last bit had been directed to him, so he nodded, pretending to be super interested in the loose threads of the sleeve seam of his oversized jacket. Shiro paced several steps away, uncomfortably mumbling into his phone; apologies of some sort, a bunch of “I know”, a few “of course” and the call ended with a hesitant “I love you too”.

By the time Shiro would turn to resume his conversation with Keith, he wouldn’t be there, having fled the atelier with urgency.


End file.
